Cultural Council installation show invites viewers to become part of the art

Jan Sjostrom @sjostromjan

Saturday

Sep 3, 2016 at 12:01 AMSep 3, 2016 at 4:19 PM

It won’t take long to go through Call to Install at the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County. That is, unless you take the time to play and think.

There are only four site-specific installations in the show. Curator Nichole Hickey selected them from 15 proposals because they reflect the quality of artists who live or work in Palm Beach County and because "they were different," she said. "They were things I’d not seen yet in Palm Beach County."

All four invite viewers to participate in some fashion. Here’s how.

* "Take me to Church: the Preaching of Steven Seagal" by Birds are Nice: Diane Arrieta, who makes eco-political art under the pseudonym Birds are Nice, created a chapel-like setting spanning the south end of the gallery.

The chapel contains six shrines to female saints associated with the environment, each with a painting of the saint and a sculpture of her companion animal. An aisle paved with yellow vinyl leads to a monitor screening excerpts from Seagal’s films "On Deadly Ground" and "Fire Down Below." The clips feature impassioned speeches about the impact of big industry’s destruction of the environment on the poor and indigenous cultures.

Arrieta is a big fan of Seagal, who also is an environmentalist. "When I thought about this idea, the first thing that popped into my head were these movies," she said. "Plus it’s just weird enough to get people’s attention."

* "Records Revisited" by Nicole Galluccio: The artist, who was born in 1975, has a soft spot in her heart for vinyl records. Over time, she amassed a large collection that she wasn’t sure what to do with after embracing other formats.

Her answer was this installation, which includes a turntable and 49 embellished album covers mounted in handmade frames. The records are still inside and playable. "I wanted people to get the feeling of hanging out in your room listening to records," she said.

* "The Mending Tree" by Viridis Art Collective: The collective consists of eight artists who band together to create works that engage the community and promote the preservation of the natural environment.

Visitors contribute to the installation by writing their thoughts on slips of canvas and hanging them on strands of yarn flecked with mirrors suspended in the shape of a tree.

The title refers to the collective’s mission and its awareness that environmental restoration "is never a perfect fix," collective member Michelle Miller said. "There are scars. You can’t go back to what it was, but it can evolve and become something new."

* "Here to There" by Katelyn Spinelli: The piece has only three components: a phrase affixed to the wall, a fragmentary concrete block wall on the floor and the viewer’s imagination.

The phrase reads: "Trying to get from here to over there." It’s an open-ended cue that invites viewers to contemplate "what is that wall to you, where do you want to go and how do you get from here to there," Spinelli said.